This and that for your Saturday reading. – Ed Yong writes about the many complexities surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, including how much we have left to figure out before being able to make any concrete plans. – Leonardo Trasande and Akhgar Ghassabian discuss how chemicals in our homes may be
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Rochelle Baker interviews David Suzuki about the lessons from the coronavirus pandemic which we should apply equally to the threat of a climate breakdown. And Mike Layton writes that we need a Green New Deal as our recovery program once the pause on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jeet Heer writes about the class war already emerging in competing responses to the coronavirus epidemic. Ricardo Tranjan makes the case for rent forgiveness as part of COVID-19 relief based on the reality as to who owns the bulk of Canada’s private
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Derek Thompson reports on Denmark’s wage subsidies which are finally being mimicked by other countries including Canada. And Duncan Cameron points out how the Libs’ early response fell far short of the mark. – Rachel Giese points out how the coronavirus response shows
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Eric Doherty, and Eric Galbraith and Ross Otto, respectively write that the response to the coronavirus shows how it’s possible to imagine and implement needed changes along the lines of a Green New Deal. And Heather Mallick theorizes that it can also
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Owen Jones writes that the coronavirus is offering a stark lesson in how inequality kills: The coronavirus pandemic is about to collide with this engine of inequality. The super-rich are fleeing on private jets to luxury boltholes in foreign climes, while the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Laura Flanders interviews Naomi Klein about the connection between the climate crisis and inequality – including her recognition that any attempt to address the former without simultaneously responding to the latter is doomed to fail: But there are a lot of people who
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Linda McQuaig points out that what normally gets claimed as a higher life expectancy arising out of capitalism in fact consists of publicly-implemented sanitation. – Richard Denniss rightly argues that no job – including that of a politician – is worth endangering
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: My review of Robert Clark’s book on Canada’s prisons
Robert Clark has written a very good book about Canada’s prison system. Mr. Clark worked from 1980 until 2009 in seven different federal prisons, all located in Ontario. The book is a compilation of personal accounts based on the author’s various assignments. Since prisons can be a pipeline into homelessness,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Sabrina Shankman discusses new research showing how the climate crisis will affect today’s youth. And Bill McKibben highlights why we can’t afford to delay in reining in catastrophic climate change. – But Damian Carrington reports on fossil fuel extraction projections which far exceed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Bob Rivett highlights the fact that climate protesters are motivated by the desire to save our world from the reckless corporations and politicians who are prepared to sacrifice it for short-term gain. The Associated Press reports that Chile’s coast is the site of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Reich points out that the most significant political divide is the one between the wealthiest few and the rest of the population: In reality, the biggest divide in America today runs between oligarchy and democracy. When oligarchs fill the coffers of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress examines Statistics Canada’s latest research on the tens of billions of dollars in taxes being dodged by multinational corporations. And George Monbiot offers an inside look into the crushing power of billionaires once they sense a threat to their sources of wealth
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Josh Bornstein writes that in Australia like elsewhere, the combination of increasing corporate profits, stagnant wages and resulting inequality can be traced to the reduced bargaining power of workers. Jim Stanford notes that New Zealand offers an example as to how to reverse
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Anis Chowdhury highlights how industry-wide bargaining which avoids a race to the bottom on wages produces improved efficiency as well as a better standard of living for workers. But Christopher Ingraham discusses the choice of U.S. policymakers to instead pull the rug
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Informal Currencies – Ramen in the American Penal System
I’ve always found the packaged noodles to be a bit too salty for my taste. I’m definitely going to have to avoid the American prison system for sure now. 🙂
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Guardian’s editorial board writes that stagnating and even declining life expectancies and nother indications of declining social health are the result of purely political choices: In 2010 a government-commissioned review looking at the relationship between health and wealth – only the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Wallace-Wells writes that even “genocide” may be too gentle a word for the consequences of a climate breakdown. Josh Gabbatiss discusses the insanity of approving – and even subsidizing – fracking and other means of exacerbating the climate crisis. And the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Kelso reports on Public Health England’s findings about the connection between poverty and more health difficulties, with residents of poorer neighbourhoods facing twice the incidence of ill health. – Phil Whitaker points out the need to address the stressors causing childhood
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Simon Wren-Lewis discusses how media negligence allowed austerian economics to be treated as credible long after any pretense of academic merit has been debunked. – Kevin Milligan and Tammy Schirle examine the relationship between income and life expectancy in Canada – featuring
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